This invention relates to a catalyst for electroless plating and a process for electroless plating using said catalyst.
Electroless copper plating is widely used for forming circuits in the field of printed circuit boards. Recently, with a demand for increasing the density and the number of laminated layers, the electroless copper plating technique becomes more and more important.
Printed circuit boards, particularly high-density multi-layer printed circuit boards are generally produced as follows. An etching resist is laminated on a copper-clad laminate used as a substrate, followed by exposure to light, development, peeling of the etching resist to form a pattern. Then, the surface copper is subjected to an adhesion pre-treatment in order to improve adhesive strength of inner layers after forming multi-layers. The adhesion pre-treatment is usually carried out by either a blackening treatment or a browning treatment. The blackening treatment make copper cupric oxide, while the browning treatment make copper cupric oxide and cuprous oxide. The adhesion pretreated substrate and a prepreg are laminated and both surfaces are sandwiched by copper foils. A plurality of laminates thus prepared are heated and pressed to give a multi-layer board. Through-holes are drilled or punched in the multi-layer board and cleaned with sulfuric acid, chromic acid or a permanganate to remove the molten resin on inner copper foils. After a honing step wherein a liquid containing abrasive particles is sprayed, a high-pressure cleaning is carried out.
The thus treated multi-layer board is subjected to a plating treatment to make the through-hole walls electroconductive. The plating treatment can be carried out either by forming a plated layer of about 0.3 .mu.m by an electroless plating, followed by thickening the plated layer to 30 to 40 .mu.m by electroplating, or by forming a plated layer of 30 to 40 .mu.m thick only by electroless plating.
In the case of electroless plating, since the catalyst usually used for sensitizing or seeding contains about 10% by weight of hydrochloric acid, the hydrochloric acid penetrates into cupric oxide layers obtained by the adhesion pre-treatment to produce a cupric oxide corrosion phenomenon on surfaces of inner layer circuits. This is usually called "hollowing" (pink ring formation). This phenomenon remarkably appears on blackening treated surfaces and slightly appears on browning treated surfaces.
In the case of a widely used catalyst system comprising palladium chloride and stannous chloride, there appears a defect in that a slight transmittance of light is admitted when tested by a so-called back light test wherein a hole after plating is cut vertically and transmittance of light is measured by lighting from under the inner wall side of the hole. Thus, it is difficult to obtain a complete throwing power of copper. Further, there is another problem in that the apparatus is damaged by the hydrochloric acid in the catalyst system.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 60-224292 discloses the use of an alkaline aqueous solution of a palladium salt and 2-aminopyridine as a catalyst for sensitizing. But this catalyst is still insufficient to remove the hollowing phenomenon and to improve the throwing power of copper. Further, stability of the catalyst solution is insufficient.